Bidayuh Graduates

Posted by Wonderboyz on March 03, 2006 at 14:39:02:

Terima Kasih Brader Want to know, for your posting with respect to Bidayuh Graduate.

With respect to your first statement, and I quote
"One family one graduate....", this battle cry or catch phrase or "wake-up call" or "rallying phrase" was first mentioned a few years back at a Bidayuh Development Seminar held at Rajah Court Hotel by YB Datuk Micheal Manyin Ak Jawong, the Minister of Environment and Public Health. It must be emphasied that this "battle cry" is a good one, because at that time it has been often cited that we Bidayuh are lagging far far behind in the educational realm of Malaysian national life. At the material time the available statistical data showed that there were approximately 2.5 Bidayuh graduates per 100 Bidayuh population (in other word only 2.5% of us Bidayuh are graduates).
It must also be clearly stated here that "Graduate" here refers to individual who has obtained at least a Diploma. Therefore please bear in mind that the number of Bidayuh with first degree is much less than the figure reflected as "graduate".

We must admit that while the "higher" objective of the "one graduate per family" slogan is very noble, we must also be realistic in accepting that fact that, in the short term, this noble objective will not be easily achievable.

To put the "one graduate per family" slogan in perspective, let us go through this statistical journey.

The typical Bidayuh family now have about 6 members (mummy, daddy and four kids). Therefore for a "one graduate per family" slogan to work, there should be one graduate from the family, meaning 1/6 X 100% (= 17%). Yeah SEVENTEEN percent! At the present time, the percentage is about 3%. So to achieve that 17% means having to multiply the number by about 6 TIMES. WOW, that is a lot of number.

So from a mathematical point of view, the "one graduate per family" cannot be achieved in the short-term, hence the idea was to say that, the Bidayuh aim to achieve the "one graduate per family" scenario in the long-term, as a dateline usually mentioned was the year 2020. Not a bad dateline! It is a good dateline. But , of course, we are all aware that year 2020 is only 14 years from now (well more like 13 years from now).

Anyway, to state it plainly, at the phase in which we Bidayuh are going, we are not gonna achieved the "one graduate per family" objective by year 2020. BUT, that is OK lah. We can still achieve that objective sometime later lah. The MOST important thing is to set a target. AND, we Bidayuh have done that. Bila kita dapat capai, impian tu, blakang kira lah! Hopefully Bidayuh parents should be receptive to the BIG IDEA.
AND this big idea is not being actively promoted by DBNA and BGA. Just in case some of you are not aware, DBNA and BGA are now actively going to specific kupuo to give seminar on promoting the importance of education to parents and school children. I have also noticed that, our political leaders like the elected YB are also starting to allocated certain part of their "ceramah" to touch on issue of education, while moderating or reducing components on politic. I figure that this is agood trend. Perhaps the YBs should increase the percentage of the content of their "ceramah" on:
1. importance of educating the children with holistic education - target audiances parents and grown up
2. culture of learning as a way of life - target audiance primary school student
3. education in a globalise world - target, secondary school children

While the YB talk about the above matters, academics and other intellectual should be encouraged to talk on:
1. the meaning of education
2. spectrum of education
3. technical education
4. academic education

It is hoped that, combining the avialable resources, would enable an interplay of political and intellectual forces to synergise the impact the various efforts.

Hopefully, YB and intellectual, should be able to see the commonalities instead of combing for minor differences.

Now, I move on to your second point and that is
"Masalahnya, atau pun boleh dikatakan fenomena nya, anak-anak Bidayuh hanya suka ambil kursus yang "general" sahaja. Segelintir sahaja yang major dalam Medicine, Architecture, Engineering, dan lain sebagainya."

Masalah ini atau pun yang you sebut sebagai fenomena, adalah lebih kurang benar. It is more of a phenomena than problem.
Why?
The fact of the matter is that early on in secondary school, student begin to be "streamed" into "Sains" and "Art". If you look at most secondary schools in Bidayuh areas, you will quickly notice that only very few classes are allocated for "Science students" while the rest are dump (sorry streamed) to so-call "soft science" and art. Once the student are streamed, the river has already diverge away fro science, so how could they pursue a graduate programe in science anymore?
The question is NOT that "anak-anak Bidayuh hanya suka ambil kursus yang "general" sahaja. Segelintir sahaja yang major dalam Medicine, Architecture, Engineering, dan lain sebagainya.". It is more of a question of "They have NO choice at ALL!" Art stucent simply cannot do medicine or architecture or engineering.
So the question we should ask ourselve is this
"How should we encourage parents to motivate their children to love scientific things?"
"How should parent make the learning of science an everyday joy??"
"How should somba in kupuo be able to make the cucu get excited about birds and bees, plants and animal, how should they make the learning of science "comes alive"?
How should teachers make the buku teks come alive?
Are our teachers hard wired to buku teks? Or do they have flexibilities of teaching-learning delivery?
How would parent accept a "living classroom" concept?

Oh yeah, lots and lots of questions to ask, and lot and lots of difficult answers.

Maybe about time DBNA and BGA set up a "Think Tank" on these issues. I am not just mentioning DBNA and BGA just for the sake of mentioning it, but DBNA and BGA can do it. Question is "Will they do it?"

Your third point was "Ramai graduan Bidayuh yang masih tidak dapat kerja.".

My answer to this staement is that, it does not affect the Bidayuh alone, nor is this phenomena confine to Malaysia. The basic question to ask is
1. Is the qualification marketable?"
2. Is the person employable?
3. Is the graduate resourceful enough?
plus many more questions.

Before I stop, I need to ask the question of
"Is a degree qualification necessarily be a passport to a lucreative job?"

Does the possession of a piece of degree paper make a person capable of doing something?
Also I have noted with considerable irritation on the phenomena that university graduate still asked their parent to seek jobs for them.
What is this?
Are the universities not teaching them enough?
Or is there some major societal problems?
How could a graduate remain unemployed for years?
Instead of the graduate asking us, we should be asking the graduate "why are you not gainfully employed"?.
We should stop appointing ourself as the spokeperson for unemployed graduate, instead, we should pressurised them, to prove their salt, to prove that their qualification is no mere pice of paper.

I think that should be what we do! Stop apologising, stop being hijacked and held as "emotional hostage" by our unemployed graduate.

They were given the opportunities. They clearly have the brains. Let them use their brain!

TQ